The company is called Heapsylon and they manufacture sensors that are in the clothing. You can watch the videos and learn more about how this works. There’s both a diabetes monitoring benefit as well as a fitness benefit to the sensors and the software. This is the first company out of the Flextronics accelerator program from Flextronics and they are big all over the world. FlexLabs is the name of the accelerator who is funding. In addition some crowd funding is on the way as I understand in talking with Davide Vigano, the CEO. Davide worked at Microsoft in the past and as a matter of fact the entire founding group has roots there. I asked if the sensors and software will connect to PHRs and Davide stated they would be releasing an API at some point and of course I would expect HealthVault to be on that map.

What is really nice though to me is their privacy policy…they are yet another emerging company that won’t sell your data, they want to sell socks with sensors instead and that’s their model. The sensors currently in the socks can be placed in almost any fabric, and thus so could be worn out of public view if one desired. Here’s some additional information discussing how the sensors compare with accelerators in the video below. You have both here with sensors in the socks and the accelerator in the phone and hear from some actual users on what they think.

The company, called Heapslyon, is making completely normal, washable socks that are embedded with sensors that users can't even feel. "We had to invent everything from scratch," said Mario Esposito, the company's chief technology officer. The socks feel like any other sock until you attach a magnetic anklet that feeds back information, via Bluetooth, to a computer that can not only display waveforms of impacts on the foot, but a smartphone app will eventually give a user audio cues in their ear bud when their running technique is poor. The free app will also display east to understand graphics on how to improve their stride.

"Not just telling them how far and how fast they run, but how many calories they burn, primarily how well they run," said Heapslyon co-founder Davide Vagano. "We think there is an opportunity to prevent injuries, to tell people you're heal striking"

If they get the funding they need, they figure the anklet, a pair of socks and the smartphone app will be sold as a bundle for $149. Early investors with Indiegogo will get $50 off and the first set of devices and socks coming off the assembly line.

Dark Arts of Mathemical Deception

Professor Charlie Siefe of NYU, a mathematician debunks clinical trials, and few other items to where data is spun and fools you, every day example, hear about the perfect butt algorithm and more. These are probably some things you have never thought about but again after listening to what he has to say, it’s time to think about being skeptical. Here’s a radio show that also talks about the same topics.

This video digs in a bit further with how fictitious business models are used by banks and companies do this too. The models are so complex that CEOs don’t even understand them. “Quants, The Alchemists of Wall Street will take you through how “math models” work at banks and financial institutions in a way that even the layman can understand. More videos like over at theAlgo Duping/Killer Algorithm Page. Bank of America will also tell you“IT’ is a business” how they make money.

Weapons of Math Destruction

This is a lecture where Kathy O’Neill, a former Quant who worked for a Hedge Fund (Weapons of Math Destruction) on Wall Street will tell you what is done with your retirement money and more. The banks and companies use technology to take advantage because they can. “Of course we are going to take advantage because our tools are our brains…if they could figure out a way to take advantage of pension funds they would, a good interview with explaining smart money and dumb money.

Algorithms Shape The World

This is a very good presentation done a TED Conference and really was the one that got everyone started thinking about algorithms and today it’s talked about a lot. As he says “if you’re an algorithm, life is looking pretty good, but can’t say the same for humans”. What is a black box? Nobody has any control over the flash crash. We have moved forward a bit but still we are writing the unreadable and lost the sense of some of what is happening. Nice plug for Nanex here with research.